NJ Web Design and Web Development

Things You Should Ask Your Web Design & Web Development Company

If you ask the following questions it should put you in a better situation.

1. What platforms do they use?

There are many freely available CMS (Content Management Systems) platforms to use these days. There is Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal, and many others. If a company tries to get you to pay for their proprietary CMS you should steer clear! If they use a home grown solution then you are locked into using them for the most part. If they use one of the ones I mention above then there are tons of people out there that can help you out if need be.
If you are looking for an ecommerce solution sometimes homegrown solutions are the best, depending on the scope of the project.

2. Do they design for SEO best practices?

We all know that everyone wants a website that can be found on search engines. Implementing search engine optimization may not be what you require your designer or developer to do for you; however, how your site is designed or coded can affect your strategy when you are ready. When you interview web design companies, this is a great question to ask & see if the person you’re interviewing is familiar with how to code to meet SEO standards. Here are a few items that affect SEO best practices:

Customizable page titles, URL’s and meta descriptions.

Use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

Ability to have a Sitemap

Ability to have a custom 404 error page

If SEO is a strategy you are considering down the line, it's a good idea to make sure your site will be built with this strategy in mind.

3. How do they plan for change or growth?

You want to make sure that your site is designed not only for what you want now, but what you will want in years to come. I usually use the analogy of building a house. If you want to start with an 800 square foot house and eventually want to expand to 23,000 square feet you better let me know now. The design will be a whole lot different if you planned on staying at 800.

4. How do they test their work?

As I mentioned above, not all of your consumers use the same technology. But to ensure things are operating the way they should or displaying correctly, web developer need to test their work. This issue might seem trivial, but you’d be surprised how many firms only test for one web browser. I recommend you ask specifically what web browsers and versions they test for during the development process. If you’re building an online community, social or e-commerce website, testing is an important part of your success. Secure payment gateways need to be tested in a real environment. Be sure to get the specifics of what your firm considers to be part of a test phase and what it's being held accountable for after the website has gone live.

5. How do they handle support requests?

This needs to be asked before the site is live. Is there a ticket tracking system? Do you just get email support ? How do requests get prioritized? All important questions!